Our fair city of San Francisco plans to suspend the Constitution for the Olympic Torch relay April 9th. I know SF is leftist, but even here – do our leaders really want to surrender the nation’s Constitution to the Communist Chinese leaders without firing a shot?

For fifty years, we’ve been trashing our schools and hospitals to pay for missiles and bombers. Hell, if we were just gonna surrender anyway we could skipped the Cold War and saved the trillions for our kids.

Let’s go all the way: rename the McArthur Tunnel the Great Tube of The People and replace the traffic police boot squad with organ "harvest" surgeons. At least Mayor Newsom could take credit for solving our parking shortage.

Because of the controversy generated by China hosting the Olympics, city officials coordinating the main torch relay event plan to designate areas for people to protest the Chinese government or other issues. The designated "free-speech zones" have been used at large events in other cities but have not had a significant presence in San Francisco.

[SF County Supervisor] Daly is critical of those zones and says he might amend his resolution to condemn their use.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has "very serious concerns" about the situation in Tibet but said that the city is "privileged" to be the torch’s only stop in North America and that the event should rise above political concerns.

Why should a city renowned for union activism and solidarity tape over our mouths for the world’s largest tormentor of labor activists?

Why a should a city renowned for free public expression collude with China’s tyrants to bring Beijing’s oppression here to the US?

After fifty years of threatening to blow up the world ’cause the Communists would take our freedoms, why should Americans let SF’s pols piss away those freedoms to please a bunch of murderous, organ-peddling tyrants and the USOC plutocrats who suck their gore-soaked cocks?

April 9th is the day for patriots across America to come to the Bay Area and remind SF’s craven leaders that our freedoms and our Constitution are sacred. Americans haven’t been dying for 232 years so Gavin Newsom can graduate from alcohol rehab and fucking his good friend’s wife to sign off on suspending our basic rights. Americans haven’t been dying for 232 years so the SF Board of Supervisors can purchase their all expenses-paid trade junkets to China by selling our basic freedoms. Americans haven’t been dying for 232 years so the manicured plutocrats who run the USOC can tell us to shut the fuck up in our own country.

Fuck that noise.

The super-rich wealthy enough to join the USOC rulership have already colluded with China to arbitrage away our jobs, destroy our communities, and provide the Chinese tyrants murdering Tibet and her people with political cover for genocide. Hey – anything goes if it makes obscenely rich people richer – right?

Fuck them and their contempt for our freedom, our Constitution, and basic human rights.

Stand up to the tyrants of Beijing and the uber-wealthy USOC board.

Honor the athletes – defy the tyrants.

Stand on the streets of SF April 9th and reclaim America’s rights for all of us. Join us in SF to tell China’s corrupt murderous regime to fuck off and die. And while you’re at it, tell our besotted mayor and the craven SF Board of Supes colluding with him what you think of traitors who sell out America’s Constitution to please the butchers of Communist China.

Join us in protecting our freedom and calling for Tibet’s freedom – and the freedom of China’s people from her corrupt leaders.

Come to SF on April 9th – and speak up.

Oh – and Gavin? I don’t know if it was all the years on the sauce, or the hair gel finally got to your brain, but since you can’t be trusted with your dick, why would you think we’d trust you to control our mouths?

Next time you wanna fuck with our Constitution, Gavin – just say no.

PS: Gavin, the day after you told us you’d "harvested" our Constitution for sale to Beijing, you tried to tell us it was all a big misunderstanding:

Mayor Gavin Newsom revealed the first scant details Thursday about plans for the Beijing Olympic torch’s April 9 stop in San Francisco….he emphatically stated that no one would be denied the right to protest its presence.

Newsom…said no attempts would be made to suppress protests – not even those along the relay route.

"But no one will be denied the ability to protest all along the parade route if, indeed, they find that it is a great idea because they want to disrupt what should be a unifying event and try to make it more divisive," Newsom said. (emphasis added)

Protesters without permits would be allowed in the so-called free-speech zones, he said.

Gee – how generous. So protesters with permits and protesters without permits get to go stand in the "free speech" pens. That’s a solution, Gavin?

Uh – Gavin? You may have been too busy getting plastered and fucking your friends’ wives to notice, but here in SF we don’t need no stinking permits to speak in public – and we ain’t gonna start getting them now. Even if we wanted to get permits, Mayor Hair Gel, your little scheme makes the route/time of the Great Torch March Forward a City Secret: held just for those with Need To Know.

I do hope you’ve decided to clue in the relay runners.

But – outside of your nearest and dearest in City Hall – the rest of us are expected to come cap (or mousse) in hand and scrape before one of your corrupt pols for a permit to assemble for petition of grievances? What part of prior restraint don’t you understand, winebar boy?

Let me get this straight, Mayor Orwell – we’re all free to protest wherever we want – as long as where we want is where the riot squad tells us to stand at the beginning and end of the Great Torch March Forward? Locations which just happen to be City Secrets – kinda like your scrogging your aide?

So, Gavin, in your perfect magnanimity, you deign to allow "organized protests" to obtain permits to assemble at the secret locations? You’re leaving the secret route of the Great Torch March Forward to – what? Disorganized protests? And who the fuck makes the decree what’s an "organized" versus a "disorganized" protest? You, Gavin – you lying treacherous sot? Your latest fuck-toy on the SF payroll? Some First Amendment scholar who joined the SFPD Riot Squad as their day job – to indulge their Kevlar fetish?

Mayor Mousse, in a city of bike riders, you should at least learn competent backpedalling. Your March 20 "solution" is yet another scam, one that leaves you and the people who come to work in SF with guns on their belts telling the people who pay your aides’ bloated salaries to shut up and take our "organized" protests where they won’t offend the delicate sensibilities of Beijing’s kidney merchants and the uber-wealthy princes of the USOC.

Fuck that noise and fuck you and your subversion of the Constitution, Gavin Newsom. You should have stuck with peddling orthotics to podiatrists: you’re not fit to tell us or the Constitution to bend over and take it in the ass. When we want butt plugs, we’ll go to Good Vibrations.

There was an interesting editorial in the NYT this morning where the author, seemingly someone who knows, maintains that the “pressure” from the Free Tibet Movement has resulted in nothing but suffering for Tibetans in Tibet. I realize that’s not really the topic here but it gave me pause.

ES, thank you – I did not know of the origin. What a peach of a gift for our Republic.

And hi Biodun and SanderO!

RZ, the choice between free speech zones and no restrictions on protests at all is a false dichotomy. Sigh. Does Pennsylvania have a season for rhetorical tricks, or is it a year-round thing there?

After 12 years of training/being trained in nonviolent CD, the simple fact is that we protesters are subject to the same civil/criminal laws as are non-protesters. The full weight of CA’s state code ensures a net of legal restirctions on protesters.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Thanks CT – I checked with the legal observers and organizers at both Chevorn protests (last week and this week – no reports of thrown objects.. As tossing objects can be a felony, we tend to watch for that.

Sadly, Seattle PD Riot Squad Chief Mochizuki (? spelling) lost one eye to an object thrown by some asshole (this was after wel lafter the WTO protests, but I had soken with him re deployment of chemical weapons on during th eweek of the WTO protests). Throwing stuff just isn’t OK – and the default assumption amongst the orgnizers is that anyone who shows up and advocates/does same is a provacteur.

Dayam – I’m glad the athlete is protectinng his lungs, and I’m so sorry the residents of Beijing and so many other cities in the PRC have to live with crippling levels of pollution.

For eco-activists, the rising frequency of “protests” (some of which are pitched battles) between local residnets on one side, and (on the other side) Communist Party/PLA bosses selling off land for pollutiing industries has been simply astoundinng.

One of the Asia TImes “cited” below in the links discusses the persistance of “Shanghai Mafia” in the upper reaches of PRC government – so highly place they basically ignore the current titular leader.

The Communist PArty (and PLA) leaers pcoekt the money – the industry gets the people’s land – and the people get the cnacer and toxic water.

Factoring in the destruction of potable water, arable land, breathable air, net economic growth in the PRC over the last decade is estimated to be zero to negative.

Of course, the US has a hand in thei. By arbitraging away our industry jobs (thanks, globalization), we’ve exported away roughlty 25-30% of our net carbon emissions to China.

All of a sudeedn, those cheap consumer goods don’t look so cheap – and the money we send to China for them hold up the tyrants who murder their poown people and sell their organs.

No. Does California have a season for creating blog posts that use 2/3rds more words than necessary?

After 12 years of training/being trained in nonviolent CD, the simple fact is that we protesters are subject to the same civil/criminal laws as are non-protesters. The full weight of CA’s state code ensures a net of legal restirctions on protesters.

My question wasn’t rhetorical, since your post made no mention of your opinion. Is the government completely restrained from taking any steps that anticipate trouble? They can only punish lawbreakers after the fact?

I was in China about 25 years ago and the pollution was so bad even then that most of the people on the streets were wearing masks. It is truly awful and must be many times worse now. I really don’t see how the athletes are going to manage with it.

World Health Organization official Dr. Michal Krzyzanowski said those with heart problems should consider whether they travel to the Chinese capital.

“Exposure to high pollution levels may trigger serious problems,” Krzyzanowski told the BBC. “People who do have heart problems might wish to reconsider their willingness to travel.

“Athletes who visit Beijing are very healthy people, probably without any sign of cardio-vascular disease. Otherwise they wouldn’t be at the Olympics, so they do not belong in the susceptible group. On the other hand, they are exercising very vigorously, so their intake of air is very high.”

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman found that the National Park Service violated its own regulations by giving the inauguration’s private organizers preferential treatment and extraordinary control over access to Pennsylvania Avenue. The Presidential Inaugural Committee roped off most of the parade route and allowed only those with tickets inside: largely a crowd of Bush administration donors, supporters and friends coming to celebrate the start of President Bush’s second term.

Protesters were limited to small, specific areas, leading to a lawsuit by antiwar activists.

I hope all American patriots will join in defying the illegal restriction of our First Amendment rights by local pols’ contemptible “free speech zones”.

Hi greenwarrior – just saw it tonight – last weekend was meetings with pesticide activsits, and this week was the antiwar protests – I look forward to responding when I’ve more free time (any free time) Sunday

I’m gonna throw this open to the group. But if you think something is verbose shouldn’t you use a whole number greater than 1. Like “You used 3 times as many words as necessary.” To say “Does California have a season for creating blog posts that use 2/3rds more words than necessary” is kinda confusing to me. It seems to me that 2/3 of the necessary words is less – not more – than what is necessary.

For what it’s worth, I enjoyed the post so I guess I’m a big enough boy to handle 2/3 more words than necessary. Didn’t hurt a bit. Lemme tell you something from my experience. About 2 weeks ago on saturday Kirk had a post up and I was moving and had loaded and unloaded a truck by myself and was pretty beat. I sat down to read a post by Kirk and said “Oh shit. can’t this guy keep ‘em shorter?” So I said “fuck this” and never finished it. Went back a day or two later and I was really glad I did. I mean, it’s not fucking War & Peace. You can handle it.

Mayor Gavin Newsom revealed the first scant details Thursday about plans for the Beijing Olympic torch’s April 9 stop in San Francisco, including the likelihood that it won’t pass through Chinatown, and he emphatically stated that no one would be denied the right to protest its presence.

Newsom made his comments hours after the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco was attacked by arsonists early in the morning and shortly before a Board of Supervisors committee heard 4 1/2 hours of public testimony mostly critical of China’s human-rights record. Despite the emotional pleas for supervisors to condemn China over human rights, the committee passed a resolution stripped of strong criticism.

Newsom promised that on the day of the torch relay, cheering crowds will outnumber protesters “10 to 1.”

I’m envisioning a single Chinese tank, surrounded by ten protesters carrying brown briefcases. You know, just for a change of pace while honoring tradition, all at the same time.

I was joking. I thought the “Bong Hits for Jesus” kids were in a free speech zone but i could be wrong.

In fact, they suck. Down here at UCF in Orlando they had designated free-speech zones on campus. Can you imagine that? A fucking college and you’re only allowed to express yourself in certain areas?? Needless to say, the designated areas were off the beaten path. Nowhere near areas where alot of people congregated. Thank god, the school caught alot of flak and ditched the idea. But what (if anything) were they thinking?

Newsome, humph I don’t know why I expect a politician here in this country to take a stand even when the Chinese Papers are calling for the military to totally squash all resistance and demonstrations. What say you, world? Boycott the opening ceremonies? Not enough, boycott the games!!!!

Twain, I lived in SF during Tiananmen square massacre. HUGE numbers of people, including Chinese Americans, demonstrated forcefully and peacefully for a long time (a couple of weeks without pause). I have great photos of Jessie Jackson and some Chinese ladies in bandannas.. Boy were they ever fired up!

I’m surprised at Newsome’s reaction to this whole deal. We’re talking about the mayor who proudly stood up and proclaimed that the state Constitution REQUIRED that gays and lesbians be allowed to obtain marriage licenses. Free speech zones don’t exactly fit with my image of Gavin.

For all the imagery and language about this grand international event, I’m guessing that there’s a lot of local politics behind this. The politics of the Bay area are . . . Confucian. The twists and turns are bewildering, to say the least.

I’ve a question, did something happen in Pennswoods that should concern me?

Did I miss something? Although I envy you California, except in wild-fire season, I am a denizen of the ‘woods’ and would invite you to visit the forests of central Pennsyvania, someday, if you’ve never had the pleasure. Great place for re-creation of equinimity, almost like a cathedral of nature.

For the last couple of years at least, there has been a controversy around the Chinese New Year parade, and whether the Falun Gong group would be allowed to march. They’ve been banned from the Chinese New Year parade, although they have been allowed at the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

So then, this is the profound wish, the hope for this upcoming Olympic Games, held in a country run by an oppressive dictatorship, a country brutally divided between new wealth and extreme poverty, eager to be taken seriously as a new global superpower and also a country never before so open to cameras and reporters from around the globe: May your human rights atrocities be exposed. May your violence against peace-loving Tibetans be shamed. May we honor and respect China’s culture and history even as your government’s nauseating attacks on peace and intellectual freedom are revealed like the appalling cancer they so very much are.

Is that fair to hope? Sure as hell seems like it.

But here’s the catch: It ain’t gonna come from the United States. Hell, NBC’s Olympic coverage is traditionally so slick and safe and cheesy and jingoistic it borders on nauseating, not to mention how NBC is wholly owned by General Electric and all coverage will be sponsored by companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and Johnson & Johnson, companies that largely adore China’s cheap labor and most of whom would happily turn a blind eye to a pile of dead Tibetans if it meant a foothold in the exploding Chinese economy.

Put another way: The odds of Bob Costas cutting away from hyping our cute perky Coke-drinking gymnastics team to show a shocking image of a dead monk lying in the street of Lhasa? About one in a billion.

But Mark goes on:

They [the Chinese leaders] don’t realize how utterly absurd and offensive they sound to the world audience. Nor do they seem to know the true power of the Internet, of the vagaries of global coverage, of what Olympic-sized media attention could reveal in the coming months. They never had to care. Until now.

I think they are about to find out about Teh Internet, in a very big way.

DWB, I’d love to take you up on that invitation. And I think the pennwooda are OK – one troll doth not a forest make!

GW, I’d appreciate the additional refs -a nd I promise to read them on Sunday.

TOrtoise, love your zones – great illustration

Are they concerned about the large Chinese community in SF and, if so, why?

Twain, as Peterr observed, there are significant tensions in the local SF Chinese community. At least one Supervisor (SF city is also a county [don’t ask!] so our Supes are city councilpeople) from the CHinese communit stomps on any public protest (like the Falun GOng) that crticizies china. Friends of mine in the Chinese community say the same criminal triads discussed in one of the cited references seem to be pusing the prc’s line on PRC critics within sf’s chinese business community. as the triads are reportedly involved in shakedowns here, that (if true) would be a significant threat.

But I am no expert on the politics within SF’s Chinese community – I ams imply quoting news accounts and a few loal fisrt person reports form docs i trust.

Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to route a parade through Chinatown, when it’s for an event in the PRC. Long memories around there, even if a lot of residents have roots back to the Gold Rush.

They had no problems that I know of, running all around LA county in 1984. Invisible security: we went down the street with a ladder to see it when it went through my area. The torch ain’t the problem, the host country (and its apologists) are. The differences between ours and the PRC get smaller all the time.

With law enforcement at all levels the freedom they fear most most is the freedom of ideas. Assembling and speaking are putting ideas into action. It is highly suspected, repeat suspected, that the FBI feared AIM (American Indian Movement) and John Trudell so much that they murdered his family in Nevada shortly after (like 12 hours) he was protesting on the steps of the FBI building in DC.

No criticism intended nor implied, it’s the larger question of people leaving in a huff. I miss Kiddo and Lahoma, for example. And ‘though I’ll admit, only to you, some people do, actually, rub me the wrong way.

So I do a certain amount of ignoring, unless provoked beyond reason, you know?

That creates a dilema, because I read everything, even from those I wish would go to lunch, and maybe have a long slow dessert….

More power to them, I say. I want all of it out in the open so the whole world can see their complicity in this farce. I have no hope that our country will do the right thing, so I’m looking to other countries (i’m glad to see atheletes pulling out due to the horrendous air quality there. I’m also amazed that anyone would pay money to fly into a country and be under surveillance the whole time they are there.

Just between you, me and the lamppost, I have the same issue at times. But I remember Rule Number Five from the late and very great SF Chronicle columnist Charles McCabe: Never Take Yourself Too Seriously. (Meaning, take MYself….)

and SD, thanks for reminding us all that John Trudell’s family died horrible deaths from murder by arson right after he spoke truth to power.

I ofetn wonder if our nation will ever cease to kill abroad ubtil we as a people acknowledge our genocide here at home

when I look at the senseless slaughter of Yosemite buffalo for the thin exuse of monanta’s wlefare ranchers, i see the same atavistic ahtred of anyting that reminds Americans of how many were killed to sieze theis land form the first peoples

(and I’m descended from George Washington’s mon – my genes are as complicit as those of any other living american)

thank you, SD

[the good folks at buffalo field campaign need out help to keep Yellowstone’s bufflao form Montana’s guns. FOr those who can, please google and contribute - they are amazing people - sleeping thoght the winter in sub zero conditions to keep the buffalo alive. GOod peeps, all]

great post kirk. thanks for the usoc list, i pulled them all up on newsmeat.com, some repubs, some dems.

i have mixed feelings about this subject, and about organized ’amateur’ sports…….was married to a coach who was in the olympic program, and we knew/know quite a few former olympic athletes and current coaches.

i feel the time to protest was when the issue was before the olympic committee when it was deciding where to hold the olympics.

everybody always seems to be behind the ball-(basketball reference for raven).

so, what now? boycott? that hurts the athletes. the trickle down affect is that they get screwed, just like we do when our ’higher-ups’ in the government do things that helps them but that screw us.

but then the argument could start about whether there should be olympics at all.

i just believe that the time to do something was when it was before the committee of where to hold the olympics, and noone ever writes one DAMN letter during that part of the process!!!!!!!!!

irks me off.

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sander0 asked about a traffic ban–i heard that has already started, a few months ago.

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eureka at 7—your wiki said free speech zones started in 1988 at repub convention/bush, but i remember it happening in cincinnati before that–there was a court case about it, it was dismissed, man, were we pissed.

bush showed up for a lunchtime rally on fountain square, and anyone with t-shirt or sign that was opposite of what they wanted to show on tv, was banned to a ’free speech zone’, but they called it something else, sorry, don’t remember what……was a big deal, and think it was before ’88, cuz i was working downtown when it happened, and think i was back working int he field by ’88.

disgusting is only the beginning…what is actually scary to me is the idea that this theory, if allowed to stand could be expanded, like this: If free speech is protected by confining it to certain places, then why can’t critical voices in the media be officially confined to certain times, channels, or websites, in the name of protecting free speech?

Well put. Ultimately, all that stands against such ‘theories’ are individual people of conscience with the courage to exhibit such conscience in public, again and again, until the absurdity, in all its disgusting manifestations, is exposed for what it is, a craven, pathetic and brutal lust for power.

As Kirk suggests, ’tis in our genes, this madness, and we must acknowledge that truth, face that truth and genuinely deal with that truth.

If free speech is protected by confining it to certain places, then why can’t critical voices in the media be officially confined to certain times, channels, or websites, in the name of protecting free speech?

Ding! That’s why fighting this in SF is so important – the symbolism will educate the US public about taking our rights, not politley asking for them.

And to think that Gavin was originally supposed to have that primetime speech spot that Obama took at the ‘04 Convention until Gavin decided gays should marry (but he handled that like a drunken fool and kinda kicked the whole equal rights down the road for somebody else to handle) and had to be taken in the backroom and out of the limelight. What has happened to my city?

kirk-npr did a story on the torch this morning, sunday, on weekend edition–no mention of what is going on in san francisco, about the free-speech zones. in fact, no mention of where the torch was going to be in our country at all. and no mention that it was the only place it will be in north america.

they mentioned the possibility of protests along the torch route, but didn’t mention the torch route.
interviewed a tibetan activist. that was about it.

you can listen to it yourself.

am writing them a letter, had to come back here to get a few of your sfchronicle links.

How come you pushed TRex out the door because you feared his foul-mouthed commentary will damage Firedoglake’s sterling reputation, but we are still treated to this asshat’s vituperative ranting on a regular basis?

As the displaced threapod himself put it on these very pages:

“I want these guys to be able to go forward from here without worrying that something I write, either on the front page or in the comments, is going to cross the line and potentially hurt their reputation or keep them from being able to have more amazing guests like Naomi Klein, Senator Chris Dodd, John Dean, and anyone else who might want to come by.”

Et tu, Dr. Murphy?

For the record, I generally agree with Murphy’s calling out of the way San Francisco is handling this protest dust-up. But his verbal hemorrhaging makes dear ol’ TRex seem like an Edwardian parlor hostess chatting about the weather while drinking tea from a china cup with his pinky sticking out. (And considering his tiny front paws, that’s quite a trick!)

Can’t you find someone who can blog about issues like this and GMOs without sounding like a drunken bicycle punk on a 3-day amphetamine binge? It’s embarrassing. Has he got photographs of the two of you in compromising positions with Rush Limbaugh or something? Because, considering your jettisoning of TRex from Firedoglake, keeping Kirk James Murphy, M.D. on your pages is just a wee bit hypocritical.